


over and over (everything comes back to you)

by thestarsarewinning



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Fix-It, Ianto Jones Lives, Immortal Ianto Jones, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Not Canon Compliant, Owen Harper Lives, Post-Canon Fix-It, but like that's more of a fun footnote than anything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:28:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25749643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thestarsarewinning/pseuds/thestarsarewinning
Summary: "You wouldn't wish this on your worst enemy."“You’re not that.”or, three times Ianto and Jack reflect on immortality
Relationships: Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones
Comments: 6
Kudos: 53





	over and over (everything comes back to you)

**Author's Note:**

> as always, i have no right to anything, im just borrowing the characters to play house
> 
> the title comes from the song This Town by Niall Horan 
> 
> i wrote this back at the start of lockdown in march and then spent too long obsessing over it until i hated every line but it's finally been long enough for me to post this.. i've also spent far too much time watching netflix and really really want to find a way to tie this in with The Old Guard somehow, but alas

“You wouldn’t wish this on your worst enemy.” 

The words hang heavy in the air and, for a moment, Ianto regrets saying them, especially when Jack slumps, all the fight knocked out of him. 

When he does look back at Ianto, he’s surprisingly sincere, though nothing about Jack really surprises Ianto anymore, they’ve been together, they’ve been around, long enough that he knows Jack. 

“You’re not that,” he says, and Ianto almost laughs, because he is, really. 

It’s just the two of them, caught together, stuck together, he’s the one person Jack can never quite get away from, not any more. He’s the only one who's always going to be around, and right now - when they’re not together, not happy, or in love, or even fucking - that makes him Jack’s enemy. 

It does strike him as ridiculous, that they’re still having this fight. It’s been nearly three-hundred-and-fifty years - three-hundred-and-fifty-years, four marriages, two divorces, the horrible five minutes where Ianto had actually stabbed Jack and Jack had stabbed him right back, two other partners for Ianto and God knows how many more for Jack - and they’re still back in Cardiff, three days after Ianto had been hit by a car only to walk away afterwards. 

He’d felt his neck snap, when it had happened. Saw the car come barreling around a corner and that had been it. And then he’d woken up, lying in the road, gasping and feeling like he might die all over again. 

Tosh hadn’t wanted to believe it, Owen had run three physicals, Gwen had watched Jack the whole time. She’d been there to see it, known Ianto died, checked for his pulse and threatened to shoot the driver, and was the first to put two and two together. 

In the end, they’d reckoned that it was after Lisa had thrown him across the hub, a little too hard for anyone human to survive and Jack had- Well, Jack had brought him back, only it wasn’t quite as simple. He’d overdone it, kept pouring petrol into the tank until it was overflowing, done it so desperately, purposefully, out of revenge, a desire to keep Ianto there to witness what he’d done, and then Ianto walked into oncoming traffic, took a bullet to the chest and sat up, breathed in the gas in Thames House and left holding Jack’s hand. 

They’d had the first fight about this three-hundred-and-fifty years ago, back when everything was still new and Ianto still looked his age, had a sister to worry about leaving behind, had nieces and nephews he didn’t want to watch age and die and leave him behind, and Jack had known and understood then, had been the one to start the fight, even if Ianto had carried it on. 

Now happens to be New York in the twenty-fourth century, not just New York but New New New New York, another end of the world, and the first time they’ve seen each other in almost three years. 

Jack, still wearing that bloody coat and flirting like he breathes, shows up in Ianto’s office, acting as the Torchwood liaison and throwing his authority around even after Torchwood’s end (seventy years ago, when there was finally too much shit to be swept under the carpet anymore). He’d smirked and helped himself to coffee and he was so Jack that Ianto hadn’t been able to help it - Jack had him pressed against the wall in his office, tie already off, missing three buttons before he’d known what was happening. 

Before his knee could slip between Jack’s, before the ‘they’re not even fucking’ fact could fall by the wayside, one of Ianto’s team had fallen through his office door, research in hand and the kind of panicked a person is the first time they live through the end of the world. 

Alien invasion, by this point, when Earth can no longer cling to the innocence and wilful ignorance it had throughout the twenty-first century, is rather less of a dire situation than one would think, but a rather resourceful species were still trying and now Ianto was one of the people directly responsible for fixing this in a way he’d never been when Torchwood was picking up these problems. 

And they’d done it, negotiated in a way that was really just trading threats until Ianto pointed out that Earth was no longer defenceless, no longer reliant on just the benevolence of an unreliable caretaker or the desperation of shadow organisations, nor insistent on destroying every species they came across- But people had still died, of course they had, and there’d still been a gun in Ianto’s hand. 

He and Jack were the ones left standing in what had, for five minutes, been the new Times Square but was now an extended parking garage for a design of ship Jack had recognised but not wanted to talk about, and there’s still rubble and bodies and they go for a drink. 

Which is how they get to same fight as always. 

Ianto, drink in hand, eyes on Jack in a way that once meant they’d shag in the archives, though unwilling now to consider acting on what his brain’s putting down, even if his body is picking it up. He’s tired, no longer running on the adrenaline that had kept him talking, which is why it takes him so long to say, “I’m fed up of people dying.” 

He expects Jack to sympathise, thinks of no other response than a shared burden of outliving everyone, but instead Jack, still not one to normally drink, his head feeling lighter than it should be otherwise, shakes his head. “You shouldn’t be. It’s how you remember what matters.” 

“People are dead Jack, it matters, but I hate seeing it.”

“It’s a consequence. Of,” Jack waves a hand airily between the two of them, unperturbed by Ianto’s anger but his tone rising to meet it, “What we are. You always see it.”

Ianto’s drink is empty and his tie feels like it’s maybe choking him. There’s blood on his cuffs, gunpowder staining his fingers, and he feels every inch of his three-hundred-and-seventy years. “It’s bullshit. It’s not fucking fair, is what it is.” 

Jack snorts, the way one might when faced with a toddler kicking and screaming over something so trivial they can’t understand. That’s when any grip Ianto has left on his temper vanishes. “You wouldn’t wish this on your worst enemy.” 

The words hang heavy in the air and, for a moment, Ianto regrets saying them, especially when Jack slumps, all the fight knocked out of him. 

When he does look back at Ianto, he’s surprisingly sincere, though nothing about Jack really surprises Ianto anymore, they’ve been together, they’ve been around long enough that he knows Jack. 

“You’re not that,” he says, and Ianto almost laughs, because he is, really. 

He does laugh, in the end, tired in more ways than he’d realised, and Jack flinches. 

Once upon a time, Ianto had almost been grateful for this; at quiet moments in the night when he’d wake, wrapped around Jack, mornings when Jack would smile at him, bright and happy and genuine: forever - actual, literal forever - had almost seemed like blessing if it meant he could have that, could have Jack. 

There will be days to come, years, maybe, when Ianto will be similarly grateful again, when he and Jack will be unable to bear being apart and drift back together, magnetised. 

Now, though, he’s twenty-four and he’s three-hundred-and-seventy-three, and he’s tired and he’s Jack’s enemy because he knows how to hurt him so acutely, in ways no one else, not even Jack himself can manage, and he does it, sets his glass down and says, “I wish you hadn’t.”

Saying that is like burning a bridge, setting fire to centuries of memories from the adventures out into deep space before they fell back into living linearly on Earth, to the very early times after they’d stopped merely fucking in the archives - archives that don’t exist anymore, blown up and too painful to recreate - and starting having dates, sleeping together, kissing goodbye before a call, a trip to the shop for milk, weekend breaks holed up in Ianto’s flat. 

Jack knows exactly what he means, that he wishes Jack had left Ianto lying on the floor of the hub, murdered by his half-converted, half-dead girlfriend, and that he means it enough to say it, and this is why they’re enemies, because Jack doesn’t pity Ianto, doesn’t stop to let him sulk but grabs his arm, hauls him off his feet and shoves him against the wall. “Right now, I wish that too. Fuck you, Ianto. Really. Fuck you. You’re not the one I wish was here.”

They’re enemies, they are, because Jack knows how to hurt him too, and it’s not holding a gun to his head and killing his girlfriend, it’s not Jack leaving him behind to run after the Doctor, it’s the thought that he’s not enough, not who Jack would want to have eternity to spend with, the reminder that he’s not special, not the one Jack waited nearly two hundred years for. 

Jack lets him go after a minute, and once upon a time, this might have turned into a shag - an angry one, post-Lisa, built on hurt and betrayed trust but still desire - only Jack leaves instead. 

**

“You wouldn’t wish this on your worst enemy.” 

Ianto says it with a whisper, laid on his back and staring up at the view of the hub Jack’s bunk affords him, and it’s a neutral statement, said only because it’s fact and it needs saying, if they’re going to work through this. They’ve really already done this, the first time Ianto clawed his way back to life, but it had been a fight then and had ended not with any discussion or answers but a shag, quick and angry against Jack’s office door. 

“You’re not that,” Jack answers, and it’s too quick, too fierce for him not to be thinking about it. He’s not laid next Ianto, hasn’t come to bed at all, and Ianto only had because he’s been shot today and needed to lie down, if only to get Owen to shut up about him being a ‘stupid self-sacrificing bastard’. 

It’s not the first time this has happened - dying and waking up - but it’s proving more and more real, undeniable now that he’s taken a bullet to the chest and walked away. 

Owen would have died, though, that’s the thing. Died in the way Ianto should have, the way Jack should, and Ianto would rather claw his way back to breathing than watch Martha perform Owen’s autopsy. 

“What am I, then? What does this make me, Jack?” It’s the one question he’s held off on asking and it’s too late to take it back. He’s not sure if he wants to, either. It’s sort of a relief for the question be out in the open, this thing between them has building for weeks, months, since Jack kissed him before he disappeared for a year Ianto doesn’t remember after he’d died for them all. 

Ianto sleeps at the hub nearly every night and, when he doesn’t, they’re both at his place; they’ve been on dates, real actual dates, and it’s not really about just a shag anymore. It can’t be. The questions not even about what’s wrong with him, what’s wrong with Jack, not really - that’s been answered. Immortal, time vortex, something about a bad wolf. It boils down to whether he and Jack are just shagging, or if it’s more. 

They’re something, Ianto just doesn’t know what. He and Jack are linked intrinsically, stuck together for eternity. They…they are facts, impossible and yet here, and they’re...they’re exclusive and they’re solid and they’re- He hates the word forever, but there’s no real alternative. 

“You’re Ianto Jones.” 

Jack’s voice is heavy, missing the lightness and teasing needed to make it a joke, and he isn’t looking at Ianto. 

That’s okay, though, because Ianto isn’t looking at him, and any effort to make himself look at Jack feels like it would be too much. His hand finds Jack’s, though, and he squeezes it tightly, and that’s something he’s always liked about Jack, how solid he is, dependable, warm, constant. 

“You’re Ianto,” Jack says again, “You- You’re the person I love the most.” 

That statement is impossibly big, it feels like it might swallow Ianto up and he can’t breathe - but that’s temporary, no matter what. He forces himself upright, sitting next to Jack at the end of his bunk and he gets sidetracked for a second then, because he’s fully healed, of course he is, and what, best-case scenario, should have been a nasty wound with stitches and surgery and care taken not to pull at the skin is once again a smooth, unscarred expanse of skin, pale and at war with what his brain is telling him should be there. 

Jack turns his head to look too, and Ianto can’t help it - he leans in and kisses him. He’s lost for words but this is something he knows, knows how to distract Jack, shut him up for a moment, and Jack is always, always willing. 

**

“You wouldn’t wish this on your worst enemy.” 

He says the words quietly, more to himself than to Jack, not that Jack would hear him anyway. Ianto says them for himself, says them as he watches the steady rise and fall of Jack’s chest, laying next to Jack and resisting the urge to reach and pull him closer. 

It’s too hot for that, too hot even at what he still thinks of as three am Earth time, and Ianto thinks sometimes he’s never going to get used to this, the never-ending travelling, the different planets, the different stars, the blazing heat a binary star system gives off and the scorching temperatures even on the fifth planet in its system. 

He likes it, though, or he does right now, laying in bed next to Jack, letting him show him the sights of the universe now that they’re finally off of Earth. 

It’s the twenty-seventh century, they’re exploring deep space, and this isn’t even Jack’s original time but he’s in his element, he knows the galaxy in a way Ianto wants to, and Ianto watches him now, finally asleep and his chest feels like there’s a supernova burning under his skin. 

He loves Jack like this. When they’re travelling and exploring and running - always running, one adventure to another, slowed down only by missed transports and sightseeing and the look Jack gets in his eye that still, still does something funny to Ianto, deep in the pit of his stomach.

If he were to roll over, tear himself away from Jack, out of their window, a pair of twin suns will be rising and he’s here to see it.

That strikes him as ridiculous, in the very best way imaginable. 

He’s alive to see it - he’s alive to see twin suns rising over a planet thousands of light-years from where he began, centuries after he should have died. Okay, so, maybe, right now, he isn’t seeing it, he’s too busy memorising Jack’s face, watching him sleep for the first night in so long, but the point stands.

If it weren’t for Jack, he wouldn’t have made it out of Cardiff, let alone to Earth Colony One, to Barcelona (the planet, not the city), to Barcelona again (the city, a trip they’d taken for what should have been Ianto’s thirtieth birthday but was more like twenty-four for the seventh time), to every incredible place they’ve ever been, and the places he’s gone on his own, when Jack and he were on separate sides of the planet, separate parts of the solar system. 

Once upon a time, Ianto knows they fought about this, about what he wants to say, but now- 

It’s like those early days again - not the early, early days, the period after Ianto had died for the eighth time but was able to fall into bed with Jack afterwards - when he’d look at Jack and think, ‘I get to have him forever’. 

Forever is turning out pretty well, at least right now. 

They’d drifted back together for the fifth time somewhere around 2478, found each other on Titan, working the same job, similar to what used to be the work of a PI, sort of, and Jack had smiled and that had been it. Sure, they were still technically married - for the eighth time, Ianto thinks, but that last one had been the result of a lot of tequila after an unpleasant visit from the Doctor - but it was almost like the beginning again. 

Jack, gun in hand - still with the Webley, always with the Webley, however impractical and anachronistic it might be - kicking the door down to find Ianto already there, pocketing his lock pick, a grin on his face as he realises. “I always do like you in a suit.”

“Careful, that’s harassment, and you know it,” A smile of his own, and then a job to do, and Jack. 

Jack, asleep and beautiful and the reason Ianto’s even here, beyond transports and a never-ending knowledge of the best places to explore in the universe. 

It’s almost too bright outside for Jack to sleep much longer - and Ianto gets it now, why Jack never used to sleep back in the very, very beginning, why he’d find rooftops and fight Weevils and live in the hours the rest of them slept, because he feels it too, the life where tiredness, real actual exhaustion, used to creep after a long day, and it’s not often he wants eight hours, let alone needs it - which means it’s not long before Ianto loses this moment to the full force of Captain Jack Harkness, insatiable and indomitable and very possibly the centre of Ianto’s universe. 

“I’m glad I have it, though. I’m glad for this, Jack. I am.” He’s still quiet, but the words have to be said, the star in his chest won’t let him keep them to himself. He means it, too, which is something new, a change from the years he’s wished for the chance to stop, and he can’t stop himself from reaching out for Jack, tracing the line of his back and waiting for him to wake. 

**Author's Note:**

> i'd love to see what you guys think? 
> 
> i'm also on tumblr as @thestarsarewinning, feel free to come say hi


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